Re: Last Call: Stream Control Transmission Protocol Management In formation Base to Proposed Standard

[Harrie Hazewinkel <harrie@lisanza.net>]

HI,

See below.

On Friday, May 9, 2003, at 01:30 PM, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:

> [snip]
>     Is it that we feel the text is not clear enuf?
Even though the text part of the draft speaks about "only the IPv4 and 
IPv6 address options are allowed in this MIB", the description part of
'sctpAssocRemPrimAddrType ' does not say that.
The description uses the word 'expected' that is (IMO) the word which
needs fixing.

  sctpAssocRemPrimAddrType OBJECT-TYPE
     SYNTAX         InetAddressType
     MAX-ACCESS     read-only
     STATUS         current
     DESCRIPTION
          "The internet type of primary remote IP address.

          Only IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are expected."

In my opinion an expectation is different from what is valid.
The expectation allows a possible DNS type. The description
should make it clear that only IPv4 and IPv6 are allowed
or all kinds of address types that resolv in an InetAddress
length that adheres to the OID size limitation.

Although, a subtype could have been nice for the 'InetAddressType'
RFC 3291 says it is better not to do that, but it MAY be in a compliance
statement.
From description of 'InetAddressType' rfc 3291:
         To support future extensions, the InetAddressType textual
         convention SHOULD NOT be sub-typed in object type definitions.
         It MAY be sub-typed in compliance statements in order to
         require only a subset of these address types for a compliant
         implementation.

This is indeed what they have done.
(NIT: Although, they have done it as part of an ASN.1 comment
and formal part and the comment could be dropped. :-)


> In other words, if we give people a choice of two options, why
> would we enforce one of them?
I agree. But suggest a fix as above mentioned to change the
description of 'sctpAssocRemPrimAddrType' and improveme the
'compiling notes' (as below).
The 'compiling notes' would be better expressing 1) what the
consequences of the exceeding of the size is, by for instance
using the DNS type and 2) mentioning that only IPv4 and IPv6
addresses are valid and 3) the compliance statements express
the limitations also.
This could be seen as repeating, but the section as is caught my
attention to it and the repetition would have solved it (maybe).


Harrie